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Sub-triangle opacity masks for faster ray tracing of transparent objects

Published:26 August 2020Publication History
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Abstract

We propose an easy and simple-to-integrate approach to accelerate ray tracing of alpha-tested transparent geometry with a focus on Microsoft® DirectX® or Vulkan® ray tracing extensions. Pre-computed bit masks are used to quickly determine fully transparent and fully opaque regions of triangles thereby skipping the more expensive alpha-test operation. These bit masks allow us to skip up to 86% of all transparency tests, yielding up to 40% speed up in a proof-of-concept DirectX® software only implementation.

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    • Published in

      cover image Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques
      Proceedings of the ACM on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques  Volume 3, Issue 2
      August 2020
      218 pages
      EISSN:2577-6193
      DOI:10.1145/3420254
      Issue’s Table of Contents

      Copyright © 2020 Owner/Author

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      Association for Computing Machinery

      New York, NY, United States

      Publication History

      • Published: 26 August 2020
      Published in pacmcgit Volume 3, Issue 2

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